Three Wizards
by poufellyanah
Summary: Young Albus Dumbledore, in desperate need of a proper friend, devises a spell to bring powerful wizards to him—only, he just might have been a tad overzealous. Result: the temporal displacement of Harry Potter and Tom Riddle to the year 1912.
1. The First

**THREE WIZARDS  
**

* * *

_SUMMARY_:

Young Albus Dumbledore, in desperate need of a proper friend, devises a spell to bring powerful wizards to him—only, he just might have been a tad overzealous. Result: the temporal displacement of Harry Potter and Tom Riddle to the year 1912.

_DISCLAIMER & NOTES_:

(1) We claim no rights to _Harry Potter_. We own no recognizable elements of this tale.

(2) This story is a co-production of ellyanah and I (pouf). Odd-numbered chapters are mine; even-numbered chapters will be written by ellyanah unless we indicate otherwise. As a result, it appears likely that _Three Wizards _will look largely schizophrenic, but we will do our best to produce coordinated chapters.

(3) _Three Wizards_ takes for granted information from all seven books, though it disregards the final epilogue. Our tale interrupts Harry's life many years after he has defeated Voldemort. Also, pretend that removing his horcrux didn't take away his parseltongue.

(4) Of ages and dates: All three of them are 31 years old according to their official dates of birth.

(5) We claim no rights to _Vocalise_. Facts about it in the story are accurate.

(6) About Lake Baika: Buddhism did spread there in the late middle ages, and prayer wheels do exist, but the context in which I used this information is purely fictional and not historically accurate.

(7) For heaven's sake, Albus ruminates too much. I want to hit him. Oh, and you _will _soon find out exactly what he did.

(8) Oh, and before we start, I suggest you watch the dates in the section headers to avoid confusion.

* * *

**CHAPTER THE FIRST**

In which Albus Dumbledore has a moment of weakness and believes he is a failure,

Harry Potter's merriment is rudely interrupted,

And someone dares to kidnap Tom Riddle in the middle of his tantrum.

* * *

_DECEMBER 24, 1912: _

_PRIVATE QUARTERS, HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY_

* * *

Early that morning, Albus Dumbledore was broodingly nursing his eighth cup of tea, sitting rigidly in a plush armchair. The sun had just risen, as evidenced by the ray of brightness filtered through a small opening between the closed, heavy drapes hung from one of the windows. The light hit the length of his side even as the rest of the room was plunged in darkness, revealing much ambient floating dust and highlighting the young wizard's features. He looked as though he had not slept that night, and indeed, he had not; he had spent the darkness hours drinking tea, repeatedly summoning some poor house-elf in the middle of his sleep. The excess caffeine had overloaded his nervous system, and a muscle beneath his left eye sporadically twitched. Heavy bags beneath his tired, glazed eyes marred his sickly complexion, and his auburn hair looked dull even in the sunlight. He looked frail, ensconced in the large fireside chair with his thin night robe hanging limply from his frame and highlighting the protuberance of his bones. Then again, it was not so surprising—negative emotions had always strongly affected him physically.

In the background, a large wizarding gramophone played a recording owled by Gellert—according to the accompanying letter, it was the voice of Antonina Nezhdanova as she sang _Vocalise_, the most recent composition by Rachmaninoff, straight from Russia. Albus had received both the previous day, near enough to the 25th of the month to act as a painful present. He impulsively jerked his wand, not bothering to divert his eyes from the cooling drink, his fingers brusquely and clumsily tightening around the cup—he was staring at it so intently that an observer might even believe him to be attempting to divine the solution to an impossible mystery. On the opposite side of the sitting room, a drawer gracelessly bumped open as folded piece of paper flew out of it and across the room to land on the small table, by Albus' porcelain saucer. He did not look at it; he didn't need to. He already knew its appearance by heart, having memorized the smooth texture of the parchment, the location of its every crease and the way his name looked, written on the back of the letter—the harsh angles that characterized Gellert's handwriting, and the unique hue of the ink.

Oh, he had certainly paid it enough attention to know it so well. When he had received it, he had at first stared uncomprehendingly; it almost seemed surreal, that after all those years, Gellert would contact him. He had read and re-read it, searching for some other meaning, hoping that perhaps he had misread, his fingers gradually starting to tremble as time went on, until he had no longer been able to hold it—then, he had locked it into the very same drawer he had just summoned it from, futilely thinking that he would forget about it. He had not even lasted an hour before he had scrambled for the key and hurriedly grabbed the letter, once more shakily reading it while cursing himself for his weakness. The cycle had carried on throughout the afternoon, caused him to skip dinner, lasted the entire night, and Albus was apparently not going to stop come morning.

A few minutes later, he could no longer pretend to be preoccupied by his tea. He set down the cup on the saucer and called a house-elf, asking for a replacement with precisely four sugar cubes. Almost uncontrollably, he lightly lifted the letter and moved it in the path of the sun ray, as he swiftly opened it. With riveted eyes, he read.

_Dearest Albus,_

_Forgive me for not writing all these years._

_We parted on unfavourable terms, which I regret. I know that your strong emotions following the misfortune with your sister Ariana had much to do with your uncompromising reaction, and I am at fault for leaving without giving you time to soothe your disposition. _

_Over time, I grew to realize that, despite our differences—and perhaps because of them—we could together accomplish more than we ever could apart. Do you remember, Albus? For the greater good. Imagine what we could do, to keep our kind safe from the muggles, to strengthen the magic of future generations, to lead wizardkind into a new era of glory and prosperity! _

_I know that, even if you might hide it even from yourself, you agree with your own words, Albus. The greater good was, and is, your greatest preoccupation—because it makes you feel worthy, does it not, to better the world for others? _

_Oh, I agree that it's an arrogant notion, but, dearest friend, magic is might. Without powerful leaders, the wizarding world falls into inertia. You know this. Your own country is a perfect sample of cultural despondency, and the British don't even know it! Take a look at your headmaster, at your ministry! Do you truly believe that it's fair to allow this to go on? Under better leaders, citizens would flourish, Albus! Instead, development is arrested, held back by the fools who gain power for little reason more than bribes and heredity._

_Tell me, have you been to Russia? The way things are run here would drive you mad. I'm sure you've heard of the revolution a few years back, in muggle Russia, but the situation is much worse in wizarding Russia. The people, even noble purebloods of ancient lines, live in squalor and poverty, oppressed by a line of quasi-squibs, whose power is only maintained by the force of tradition and the compulsions that are periodically cast on their advisors and military leaders._

_I wish you would join me—then, perhaps, we could succeed in changing things for the best. In fact, I have made a few friends (though none your equal in my eyes, I assure you) who would be ready to help us in the endeavour._

_I write from St. Petersburg, you know. Just a few days ago, I attended a wonderful performance of _Vocalise,_ Rachmaninoff's composition for Nezhdanova—I have enclosed the recording—and I felt the need to share it with you, as I know that you enjoy such masterpieces._

_Do write back, my old friend._

_Love, _

_Gellert_

He shifted the parchment away from the light and placed it on the table once more. He was just about to reach for the newly arrived steaming cup of tea when there was a series of excited raps on his door. Thwarted in his attempt to indulge, Albus stood, his tall lanky form casting an elongated shadow across the floor. He took in a sharp breath when he walked off the rug onto cold stone, but nonetheless walked across to the door to his quarters without bothering with a warming charm, instead absently waving his wand to silence the gramophone. His suspicions about the identity of his visitor were confirmed when he opened the door: Dippet stood in the hallway, looking jovial. Albus repressed a sigh.

"Good morning, Armando. I trust all is well within the school?"

The response was so overjoyed and loud that it threatened to induce a headache. "To you as well, Albus, to you as well! And there's no need to worry about anything, no worries at all," he paused, looking slightly hesitant, "I was merely concerned for you—you see, a number of our colleagues have noticed that you seemed… unsettled after you received a letter at lunchtime… and then you locked yourself in here…" The older wizard rather blatantly tried to look around Albus into his quarter.

"Then allow me to allay your fears—I merely suffered from an upset stomach, and then I forgot the time—completely absorbed in research—in fact, it's waiting for me presently, and it's rather fascinating, so I'll let you enjoy your morning," Albus truly did not have the patience to deal with platitudes at this point. Armando was annoying, with his silly concerns, his weak magic, his interest in meaningless social niceties.

"Ah, but of course, of course," Dippet shuffled his feet, "well then, I'll leave you to it—but don't forget to enjoy the holidays, eh?"

With barely coherent parting words, Albus gently shut his door. A flick of his wand had _Vocalise _filling the air again, and he leaned back against the door for a few moments, just listening as his feet grew colder. What a fitting piece Gellert had chosen, indecisive and fragile despite the almost unbearably stable rhythm, constant yet faltering. The haunting melody followed him as he walked to the table, picked up the letter once more, crossed the room once more, and set it back into its drawer. As he locked it, the song ended, and a slight clicking sound signalled the automatic resetting of the recording as the beginning chords commenced again. He spun around to finally walk back to his seat.

His bare feet snuggled into the warm downy rug as he sat down, the gratifying sensation only comforting him as he once again turned his thoughts to the letter. Gellert knew him—too well. He was not so naïve as not to notice how the muggleborn issue was glossed over, how there had been no mention of killing anyone, how the younger wizard had focused on those injustices that particularly disturbed him, or how he had subtly hinted at companionship. Albus Dumbledore was a man of many faults, but stupidity was not one of them. He knew—quite well—what it meant for Gellert to have _friends _ready to help him: he had gathered supporters of some sort, and was quite possibly ready for a violent government take-over. Intellectually, he knew that he would never participate in such ventures, not when he knew just what Gellert was capable of. But the idealist part of him was still attached to the man and everything that he represented, and did not allow him to outright decline the invitation.

The knowledge that he would likely still be with Gellert if disaster had not struck profoundly disturbed him. It reminded Albus that he had a destructive potential—his utilitarian philosophy, his great magical power, his unconditional love for magic and everything it touched… his veiled arrogance and restrained ambition—his very being itched to do something great and saw it as his birthright, but oh how terribly easy it would be for him to lose himself, making hideous mistakes, wronging others as he went on believing that he had done right for the greater good... He took a sip of sugary, warm tea.

All these years, the thought had chilled him enough that he had voraciously kept his ambition in check. His NEWT exams were the last truly remarkable thing he had publicly done. On the outside, he looked to be the typical scholar—curious, inquisitive, and occasionally bringing in new material that was not truly groundbreaking. Albus never published anything important. He had shown just enough to get the teaching job, and kept any revolutionary advancements to himself. It was not done out of intellectual avarice. Rather, it was partly because he knew that if he did publish those things, the attention he would receive would only further tempt him to take a leadership role of sorts. He did not think he deserved it: he was far too likely to fall into a moral slippery slope, demanding more power and causing others to suffer, all for an overarching vision.

Another part of him also felt that this way was best because it would even further alienate him to rise above the rest. He did not like to admit to his loneliness, but it was always present. He was constantly reminded that other wizards didn't understand magic the way he did, that they didn't share his passion for it. It was a little-known fact that wizards' power levels correlated to their connection to the very essence of magic. For someone like Albus, the connection went above and beyond what his peers experienced. Average fools (like Dippet) used magic as a tool despite whatever theoretical understanding they might have that magic wasn't merely a means to an end. He worked _with _magic, because magic at its core, inherently, _was_ intent, all the intent in the world—and he had known since childhood that intent was everything he needed to give magic a direction. He longed to explore the mysteries of magic, to push its boundaries as no one ever had before, but any findings would be given to a blind community, with no one able to grasp even his main premise, no one but Gellert. But he couldn't viably fill the loneliness with Gellert, could he? Albus knew it well enough, but still, the idea usually nagged him once in a while, and that morning, it was constantly present in the undercurrent to his thoughts.

And then— a manic twinkle erupted in his eyes.

It hit him. The solution, that is.

He jumped to his feet as if he was possessed, accidentally bumping his knee on the table's leg hard enough that it sent his nearly full cup of tea crashing to the floor. With a hasty swipe of his wand to give himself slippers in mid-step, he ran out of his quarters, leaving the door ajar behind him. In just a few minutes, he had raided the Restricted Section at the library, and was running, cheeks flushed, back to his rooms with a long trail of books floating behind him in a merry circus, ancient manuscripts and tomes of recent breakthroughs happily bobbing along. He directed them to the table with a thought as he hurriedly flung open all of his curtains, waving his wand in a grand arc to flood the room in sunlight. Two flicks respectively turned off the music and lit the fireplace, and a final motion summoned a self-inking quill and a self-replenishing stack of parchment from his bureau. When Albus sat, he did not even notice that a house-elf had taken care of the mess the teacup had made—he did not waste a second before he began flipping through the books, ravenously cross-verifying information, taking note of potentially useful runes and possible arithmantic formulae, and feverishly double-checking every step of his work. Nor did he notice when the shadows moved as the sun rose and fell, or when Dippet once again knocked at his door to beseech him to at least eat dinner.

And, at sundown, when he finished designing a ritual to bring him some company he could relate to, he did not hesitate to set it in motion and to finish it with the words to the sealing spell. It was doubtful that anything _could _have stopped him—his demented grin alone would have been enough to scare away the poor soul attempting to reason with him. Albus Dumbledore would later describe it as the nuttiest moment of his life, and that was saying a lot.

* * *

_DECEMBER 27, 2011: _

_RUSSIAN SIBERIA, A DARK AND DAMP CAVE JUST SOUTH OF LAKE BAIKA_

* * *

A young man cautiously sat on his heels as he carefully examined a handheld, gold-plated wooden Buddhist prayer wheel, kept away from the moist stone by a polished rest. Nearby, a walking stick and a scoffed leather bag rested on the ground beneath a floating lantern. The fire contained within the lamp cast soft, wavering shadows down upon the man that veiled his eyes beneath long bangs, even as the light chillingly punctuated his smug smirk. Indeed, he had a right to be satisfied: his previous month had been dedicated to tracking down the wheel—he had relentlessly inspected countless forgotten caves in its pursuit, ignoring Christmas, taking only minimum care of himself, until finally, he had happened upon an ancient shrine. Amidst its rotting wood, he had found the key to discovering the wheel: a scroll upon which a formula he recognized all too well had been scribed—"The Mani of Divine Healing is located at the cave southernmost of Lake Baika." Evidently, the cave had been under a Fidelius charm, its location carefully written before the death of the Secret Keeper. The man had been slightly miffed that he had not considered the problem of finding the wheel from that angle, but as he nonetheless admired its impeccable condition, he did not linger long on his irritation.

He slowly shifted his hand around the object, perspiration beading on his forehead as he weaved his magic into the rather aggressive defensive wards, careful not to touch it and barely restraining himself from quivering in anticipation and glee. The man did not need more than a few minutes to accomplish his purpose: he quickly and inextricably tied himself to the wards and dragged them down by violently pulling his magic back into his palm. The abrupt disappearance of centuries-old magic momentarily caused a power void in the cave, the lack of magic in the area silencing and stilling all that it contained, even stopping a water drop's fall in mid-air as if time itself had been banished. For a few precious, blissful moments, the man basked as his acute magical senses were completely numbed. But too soon, the moment ended. Ambient magic painfully whipped past him toward the prayer wheel to fill the vacuum, brutally throwing his walking stick at his head, pushing him to the ground and sending his lantern and bag crashing into the wall. The magical force, as if it were a strong wind, made his muggle coat billow and slap noisily against the skin of his back. His face protected between his arms and his hair blowing against his head, he endured the battering as he usually did—with clenched eyes and tightened muscles.

When, at length, the magic stilled, the man's posture relaxed, and he slowly raised his head, and then his chest, from the ground, supporting his weight with his forearms. Once he was assured that the prayer wheel was intact and free for the taking, he let out a relieved breath and brushed aside his long bangs, wiping the sweat from his brow with a hand weighed down by his now soggy coat. Unhindered by hair, the light from his lantern (thankfully charmed to be unbreakable) shone into his bright green eyes, giving them an odd gleam in the feeble orange glow of the fire. But despite how exceptional his eyes were, his most recognizable feature lay just above them; on his forehead was a shockingly red scar in the shape of a lightning bolt—the one that inescapably marked him as a celebrity throughout the British wizarding world: Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, Chosen One, Order of Merlin, and a litany of other titles. In fact, it was that scar, the problems it had led to, not to forget his status as the 'saviour', which had permanently driven him to search for forgotten and legendary artefacts as a curse-breaker.

Of course, upon the final defeat of Voldemort, he had gladly accepted the respite of normal life; his entire life until that moment had been riddled (pun not intended) with abnormality and danger. The change had been utterly welcome: he had dated Ginny for a short while before they had married, he had become a successful auror, he had avoided journalists, and he had faced no immortal megalomaniacs bent on killing him because of a ridiculous self-fulfilling prophecy. But then, expectations had come. Ginny had wanted a devoted, caring and obedient husband to father her children. The ministry had wanted a sycophantic devotee to ask no questions about its inefficient system. The press had demanded more achievements, as if his previous contribution to society was no longer enough. And the Hallows had developed a mind of their own upon their rejection by the Master of Death.

He had lived up to it all without complaints for a short while, indulging Ginny, acting the part of a bureaucrat, feeding tidbits of information to Skeeter and her compatriots, and pretending that the Hallows didn't exist. For his credit, he had tolerated it until he was twenty years old. At that point, he had realized that Ginny was _annoying_, that loving, caring families and bossy wives were not for him. He owed it to his accidental magic that it had recognized his unconscious refusal to commit to that life: it had prevented his wife's pregnancy, such that when he finally had had enough with the boredom of interrogating minor criminals and the irritation caused by the media's attention, there had been very few attachments between him and his 'normal life'. He had shortly asked for a divorce, which had incited the wrath of the Weasley clan for having disturbed their family structure—with the exception of the twins, who he suspected had always expected that outcome.

When he quit his job and left his wife, the tabloids had gone mad, claiming that their saviour had failed the ministry; that he had renounced the Weasley family to cover a secret scandal; that he was a new Dark Lord out to destroy society. From then on, it had been a simple decision to avoid England. As his final act in wizarding Britain, he had finally ceded to the pull of the Hallows, recovering them as his acknowledgement of his title as the Master of Death—a dub which had been held by no other before. When all three had been united on his person, the cloak worn, the stone in his left hand and the wand in his right, they had for all intents and purposes imbued his person with their magical characteristics and left their respective objects without a trace of power. He had at first experienced his usual reaction to such abnormalities: he had been mortified. After having spent a few hours in a Parisian café, he had had a sort of epiphany—a resolve that from then on, he wouldn't care a whit about being normal—and he had gaily used this new power for the first time by regaling himself with a wandlessly conjured sour cherry candy (a habit he had appropriated from Dumbledore).

From there, he had taken a leaf from Voldemort's book: he had travelled the world for many years, figuring that a quest for rare knowledge would be satisfying enough. It had first led him to Egypt, where he had learned of ancient wards and how to break them, of hieroglyphics and their role as runes, and of immortality rituals that he supposed Tom Riddle had disdained because they left their practitioners as squibs. He had explored the Saharan Desert, where he had survived with few hardships after a desert wizard had taught him permanent conjurations based on blood that permitted their creator to have sustenance for himself without losing it the instant his conjured food and water faded away. He had gone to Eastern Europe, where the Dark Arts were legal; he had learned them from an aged Estonian wizard, who had taught him advanced Occlumency skills designed to allow one to keep control of the self even when insanity threatens to consume dark arts practitioners. He had spent months in wizarding Constantinople, the last bastion of Ancient Rome, learning the secrets of complex arithmancy, spell creation and alchemy. The Middle-East had granted him an understanding of astronomy, divination, and Centaur weltanschauung. He had learned the Healing Arts in Tibet, and had become absorbed in the philosophies of magic in China. In South America, he had learned of time magic, finally understanding the workings of time turners. Australian Aborigines and North American Natives both had taught him of the flow of magic in wildlife... and so much more, from every corner of the globe.

For the past eleven fascinating years, he had learned all he could about magic, taking intermittent curse-breaking jobs and finding a number of magical treasures, as such tasks were best suited to his talents. He had paid little attention to himself beyond practical matters, often neglecting to cut his hair, for instance, and had kept little contact with his old friends, preferring to distance himself from his past. Only Hermione regularly exchanged letters with him: she and Ron had married shortly after the final battle, but over the years, her husband had expected her to be a housewife and grown annoyed with her refusal to conform to British wizarding expectations of women. Eventually, she had had enough of not living up to her potential, left Ron, become a Healer, studied medicine in a muggle University, and had finally thrown herself into research combining muggle and magical medical principles to cure the incurable. He had received her Christmas owl two days ago, in fact: he had sent her a Tibetan manuscript from the Bon lineage of traditional doctors, and she had responded with an old parseltongue compilation of spells that could be performed both by magical snakes and parselmouths.

And so there he was, once again treasure-hunting, alone in a forgotten grotto, muddy and soggy from an encounter with the ground, yet entirely satisfied because he had done the unattainable—to other wizards, that is. Wiping his squalid hands on stained khaki trousers as he clambered to his feet and walked toward the prayer wheel, he felt the familiar thrill of complete elation, the one he had unknowingly been hooked on since his very first year at Hogwarts; the one that came with impossible successes, that fulfilled his need to feel powerful and useful. He swiftly conjured a piece of silk, and, careful not to dirty the priceless handheld artefact, delicately wrapped it around the wheel. With a wave of a hand, he set wards to protect the package against harm and the notice of anyone but himself—and then proceeded to drop it unceremoniously in his carrier bag, which lay crumpled by the wall. With a last glance around the cave, he flung the shoulder strap over his head, summoned his walking stick into his hand with a twitch of his fingers, and strode out of the cave with his lantern trailing behind him.

He was immediately assaulted by unbearably bright sunlight. He shadowed his narrowed eyes with his arm with a slight wince and looked around the area for his sole travelling companion: Dobby. He looked forward to going back home, actually—he would celebrate both his find and Christmas, probably reading the parseltongue journal Hermione had sent him while drinking one of Dobby's perfect hot chocolates. No matter what he did, any hot chocolate he conjured fell short of that particular treat. He did not have to extend much of an effort to find the elf, as he was located first: a short being soon slammed into Harry's legs and tightly wrapped its arms around them in a flurry of shrill words.

"Master Harry Potter sir! Dobby knew Master Harry Potter would succeed! Harry Potter sir is the greatest wizard!"

But before Harry could even attempt to calm the diminutive house-elf, he felt a strange sensation, almost as if something that had been seeking his magic had found it—and then it literally grabbed his magic and _pulled_.

* * *

_JULY 27, 1957: _

_GROUNDS, HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY_

* * *

Tom Marvolo Riddle, self-dubbed Lord Voldemort, sole heir of Slytherin, slammed the main door to Hogwarts with the force of his magic as he furiously strode away from the school with billowing robes. He had just applied—perfectly lawfully—for the DADA position at Hogwarts, only to be _rejected_ by some meddlesome old coot! He tightly gripped his wand as he crossed the grounds, a dangerous snarl growing on his face. He was perfectly qualified for the job. Tom knew quite well that _Dumbledore_—he hatefully hissed the word under his breath—had only refused him on principle. Oh, perhaps he had an inkling of his plans to collect followers, but was the man truly so blind as not to realize that he was doing the very same, only with benign smiles and his _bloody _lemon drops_?!_ To think that, had he come back just two years earlier, he could have easily charmed Dippet into hiring him and being glad for it.

Tom Riddle _loathed _Albus Dumbledore—in italics. It wasn't truly because the man saw through him; if anything, had it been his only grievance, he might have respected Dumbledore. No, he quite honestly would have liked to have an honest challenge, and that was the problem. Dumbledore did not live up to his potential, and Tom… well, Tom took that as a personal insult, and personal insults to Tom tended to spell out death for their perpetrator. He knew very well that Dumbledore, like himself, had more to his name than intelligence: he had power the likes of which was only born perhaps every generation—or two, or three. He rather thought that it was a responsibility for people like them to take on a position of power. After all, compared to the doddering idiots hovering around, they knew best. And Dumbledore did absolutely _nothing, _and it wasn't even because he didn't notice the problems that he could solve. No, he was clever enough to see the poor state of society, and he was powerful enough to stop Tom's predecessor as a Dark Lord, and yet he was content with keeping the status quo and letting utter morons and magically weak fools decide the future and the opinions of the wizarding world. It was utterly contemptible. Truthfully, Tom thought that Dumbledore himself was more of a threat to wizards than any Dark Lord. People like Dumbledore encouraged ministerial bureaucracies to carry on with whatever silliness and corruption they had going. They weakened the population at large. Dark Lords, no matter what they did or what their aims, rattled society—they incited change, they forced people into some type of action, they ultimately strengthened them.

His only satisfaction with his visit to Hogwarts was that he had hidden his latest horcrux within the Room of Hidden Things, where it would stay perfectly safe right under Dumbledore's nose. He was in fact quite smug about that particular achievement. His snarl twisted into a further grimace when a smirk vied for dominance on his face. His fast pacing soon brought him to the edge of the Forbidden Forest: he could have simply left through the main gates, but the forest was the perfect venue for him to vent his anger. He furiously treaded through the trees, snapping his wand at all that stood in his way—reducing the larger ones to cinders, shattering thinner trunks and breaking offending branches and twigs. The feeling of his magic powerfully rushing through his body only served to fuel his anger, and his curses only grew in intensity and in magnitude. The magical creatures of the forest fled the area before he could even see them, and he cast a long _crucio_ on the single animal—a small rabbit—he encountered.

When Tom reached what seemed to be the center of the forest, he could no longer restrain himself.

"_Fiendfyre!" _He bellowed, and the powerful fire erupted from his wand. It burned a tree—then two, then four, and as it grew, it took the shape of a great basilisk. The fiery snake—or snake fire, whichever—took just a few seconds to slither through the nearby trees, perhaps within a ten-metre radius, and pulverise them all. Tom let out a lengthy burst of hysterical laughter before dispelling the fire. It would not become him to allow it to attack him, after all. But he did not stop the destruction, and he let out a stream of curses.

"_Reducto_!"

A silent cutting curse.

"_Bombarda_!"

Another explosion curse.

"_CRUCIO_!"

Nerve damage permanently addled a squirrel, and its partner was a tempting victim.

"_AVADA KE—"_

He was so absorbed in his wrath that he did not notice when, as if he had activated a portkey, something discourteously pulled at his navel before he had even finished his curse. As he was transported, the pieces of soul contained within a diary, a ring, a locket, a cup and a diadem followed.

* * *

_DECEMBER 24, 1912: _

_PRIVATE QUARTERS, HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY_

* * *

For a moment, Albus waited with bated breath for something to happen, for a wizard or a witch to come crashing through the Hogwarts wards to appear before him. …Nothing. As the moment grew longer, his chest gradually began to deflate, his triumphant smile to wilt, and the twinkle in his eyes to dim. Soon enough, he let out a self-depreciating chuckle, looking the very image of a defeated wizard. He had been foolish, very foolish indeed. The young professor sank into his armchair, and, just for a second, his sorrow turned to rage—the kind of irrepressible fury that emerged in him when his self-loathing became too much—and, with a violent sob, he rigidly leaned forward and swung at his table, overturning it and sending the chaotic mess of books and papers to the floor. A few errant pieces of parchment hovered and glided, some directly into the hearth, others merely catching fire before sashaying away from the flames onto the floor.

The wizard sagged deep into his seat, gazing with unfocused eyes into the fire, unmoved by the blazing parchment burning holes through his favourite rug. Numbly, his fingertips grazed the armrest as his mind wandered. He briefly thought of the upcoming day, when even the students who had nowhere else to go, no one with whom to enjoy Christmas, would surely rejoice in the festive magic of Hogwarts. Albus knew that he would have to adopt a cheerful mask, for their sake if not for his own. He did not know if he would be able to maintain the charade when he saw their carefree smiles. He feared the reminder of his failures, the moment those smiles would trigger the image of Ariana, adorable, happy Ariana, from before the attack by the muggle boys, before his father's incarceration, before his mother's death, _Gellert_, and—and—_everything_.

He chucked his spectacles to the floor and curled upon himself, supporting his head with his hands and wearily massaging his eyelids with his fingers. For a long time, he remained still, seemingly frozen in place as he attempted to still his raging emotions, all the while berating himself for having, even for a second, held the silly hope that he could move on from his past if he had someone who understood. In that armchair, he started doubting that he was even competent enough to fulfill his role as a professor—for how could he possibly ensure the safety of his students when his negligence had cost the life of his own sister? How could he possibly imagine instilling proper values in youths when an aspiring dark lord was using Albus's own words as a creed? The transfiguration professor ruminated at length that evening, motionless to the point of complete numbness.

When, long into the night, Albus Dumbledore finally moved, slowly rising and walking directly to his bed to fall into a fitful sleep, he left behind him an image of failure; the small table on its side, half-moon glasses forgotten, open volumes with rumpled pages on the floor, and greyed cinders of burnt papers scattered near the fading embers of the fireplace.


	2. The Second

**THREE WIZARDS **

* * *

_DISCLAIMER & NOTES_:

(1) We claim no rights to _Harry Potter_. We own no recognizable elements of this tale.

(2) Ellyanah gave the outline for the first section. I (pouf) did the rest. I will most likely be writing the remainder of this story alone, though Ellyanah may occasionally contribute ideas.

(3) I am so dreadfully sorry for the delay, and I will try not to do that again.

(4) Huge thanks to all reviewers! Your comments are all appreciated.

(5) If you're interested in the Azande witchcraft reference, read Evans-Pritchard. I couldn't really provide a suitable description of those beliefs, as they have nothing to do with the plot, but I do encourage you to find out more.

(6) This time, watch the hours, not the years.

(7) Poor Tom. …Poor, poor Tom. I fear Albus and Harry might induce an aneurysm before they can exert a delightfully nefarious influence on him.

(8) Before you say it: yes, Tom _is_ being off-key, but there's a clear reason for that.

(9) And finally: Ellyanah—hopefully this will take your mind off the wisdom teeth and chipmunk cheeks (oh, and happy birthday again, you old coot ^_^).

* * *

**CHAPTER THE SECOND**

* * *

In which Tom's bad luck prevails as he is defeated through markedly muggle means,

Harry Potter vengefully pretends flippant ignorance of magic,

An indecorously befuddled Albus attempts to explain the universe,

And all experience extreme panic and mystification

(In an effort to pander to their pride: 'mild alarm').

* * *

_11:56 PM, DECEMBER 24, 1912:_

_A CLEARING IN THE FORBIDDEN FOREST_

* * *

"—_DAVRA!" _

As he enunciated the last syllable of his spell, Tom found himself rapidly redirecting his wand, as—incomprehensibly—the squirrel had somehow moved a few meters left of its previous location. Within the same moment, a green beam shot out of the tip of his wand, signalling the obnoxious fluff ball's imminent end.

Or rather, it _would_ have signalled it, had a heavy mass not slammed into his forearm at the last minute and caused his curse to miss its target. Indeed, the killing curse, rather than producing the delightful sight of a fresh corpse, was wasted as it hit the dirty ground of the forbidden forest without harming a single thing. To Tom's dismay, it did not even hit a blade of grass.

Tom Riddle was, to say the least, rather frustrated by this outcome.

It was this frustration that fuelled his angry swivel toward the direction of the blow on his arm. He had never allowed anyone, or anything, to escape unharmed after hurting him or hindering him. Many individuals could testify to this fact—the bullies from the orphanage and his father, for instance. This response to harm was so deeply ingrained that his instinctive reaction was always quite simply to strike back with more violence; it had never failed him, and as a result was quite deeply conditioned. So it was that he automatically raised his still-numb arm with the clear intention of obliterating whatever had dared hit him.

As seemed to be the theme of his day, his goal was once again unachieved.

Before he had even fully registered that he was attempting to look at and curse a nonexistent aggressor, a brutal blow to the back of his head had his knees giving out for a few instants, and him dizzily attempting to regain balance as he staggered. When he recovered control of his body, Tom no longer cared about eliminating his assailant—he wanted him or it to _suffer_. With surprising rapidity for someone so indisposed, he had his wand pointed at the dark shape of a man, and an unforgivable halfway out of his mouth.

"_CRUC—_"

He really should have expected it to fail. Everything that day did, at least compared to his usual rate of success, so he wasn't sure why it surprised him when he was interrupted by the harsh whack of a cane on his already bruised arm. Unprepared for the pain as he was, a muscle spasm caused his hand to twitch; his wand dropped to the ground. His attempt to recover it was met by yet another blow to the back of his head. This time, Tom fell to the ground face first, and was, much to his displeasure, acquainted with much snow.

Tom was unhappy to find that the rush of air he had let out upon being hit had left his mouth open for quite a large amount of that snow.

He was even more unhappy to find that his fall had allowed the man to grab his wand from the snow and place it in his pocket.

As gracefully as he could, he spit out the half-melted snow and pushed himself off the ground with the intention of physically hitting the one who _dared_ steal his wand.

This time, the walking stick hit him across the stomach. With a grunt, he bent double and tried to catch his breath.

A final blow to the back of his knees had him sprawled on his back with the man towering over him. Before he could once again attempt to stand, the tip of the cane pressed threateningly at the hollow of his throat, effectively immobilizing him. Tom had no choice but to settle for finally ascertaining his situation; he looked up at his attacker.

The moonlight shone on the man's front, allowing Tom to see him more clearly than he had earlier. A cursory examination revealed that he was probably shorter than Tom himself, but about as lithe; the trousers and coat fitted the man in a way that made his willowy stature obvious. He grinded his teeth in fury and glared up at the face of his _muggle_—for no wizard would wear muggle clothing—attacker, whose eyes were a rather bizarre shade of green, pleasantly quite alike _Avada Kedavra_.

Tom involuntarily shivered—from the cold, of course.

It was only then, as melting snow made its way into his robes and chilled him to the bone, that his mind caught up with his surroundings. Indeed, he made two disconcerting observations that had escaped him up until that point… and they were rather troubling, as far as observations went.

First; it was no longer midday, but the middle of the night.

Second; it was no longer summertime, but a very snowy, and very cold, wintertime.

He couldn't control the alarmed widening of his eyes, nor the sharp intake of his breath. Neither could he stop himself from breathing out a shocked—and painfully plebeian—"What the _hell?!_"

* * *

_02:18 AM, DECEMBER 25, 1912:_

_PRIVATE QUARTERS, HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY_

* * *

Albus Dumbledore did not sleep long, not that his sleep had in reality been restful: quite the opposite, in fact. So restless had it been that, by tumbling around more times than one could count, he had effectively trapped himself in a twisted cocoon of blankets.

That is why, when he woke with a start and his bloodshot eyes snapped open, his attempt to get out of bed resulted in some issues. Indeed, when Albus endeavoured to move one leg off his mattress, he found that his second leg was also dragged along. His arms flailed wildly as he attempted in vain to catch his balance until, in a flurry of movement, he toppled over.

In the end, his abrupt awakening landed him on the floor, cradled within an undignified heap of blankets and pillows.

And with numerous groans of pain, Albus managed to extricate himself from the tangled mess—only to trip on a pillow as he attempted to rush out of his bedroom.

Contrary to what his current quandary might suggest, Albus Dumbledore was not a clumsy man. In fact, most would label him as somewhat graceful, and would describe his poise (characterized by benign smiles) as mostly unflappable, as he had not quite reached the level of emotional control necessary to be composed at all times. Indeed, those who knew him would testify that the rare instances where he was shaken constituted the only times at which Albus was ever clumsy. Nonetheless, he was capable of keeping his cool in most conditions that didn't involve Gellert or Ariana—

—Except in this one situation that had him running around in a manner reminiscent of a beheaded chicken.

_This one situation_ included the fact that there existed an array of very important and complicated factors he _had not considered_ when crafting an already exceedingly complicated spell. It also included the fact that the whole thing about unconsidered factors had only occurred to him in his sleep _after_ he had cast the spell and wasted his time brooding about a complete failure that may actually really be something _else_, also known as something _worse_ than complete failure, because the complicating unconsidered factors really might have done something _bad_, as in, _something potentially world-shattering_ if his intuited suspicions were correct_, _and his intuited suspicions were almost never wrong, and, by Merlin and the Founders, _what had he_ _done, _and—and he was so completely and utterly _**doomed**__!_

… Hence, his panic and clumsiness.

But perhaps it was but a nightmare, and perhaps he _had _considered everything, or perhaps he had made sure his spell worked in an isolated vacuum, hermetically closed off from outside influences, so that he hadn't _needed_ to consider everything, after all. Perhaps the tea had addled his mind; perhaps these horrible lacunas (which he still did not dare to name, even to himself) in his spell were just imagined, a product of his subconscious wanting to make him anything but a failure.

He couldn't truly have _forgotten_ what he suspected he had, could he?

He had to check. Now, immediately, _yesterday_.

Albus picked himself off the floor once more and frantically set out of his bedroom toward the area he had occupied while crafting his spell. His quick lighting of the room revealed that the floor was still littered with his previous day's work. He fell to the floor on his knees and, hands trembling, grasped at his leftover calculations—those rare pieces of parchment that hadn't landed in the fire—and hysterically flipped through them for a few moments before he realized that he couldn't actually read any of it for a lack of spectacles.

He blinked and tried to recall what, exactly, he had done with his glasses. He vaguely remembered chucking them on the ground somewhere by the armchair… but of course, he was just visually impaired enough that he couldn't see them there. No matter: he crawled in the general direction of where he estimated the glasses to have landed, at a slightly more sedate pace than when he had rushed into the living room so as to allow himself time to slide a hand across the floor in search for the object in question.

Finally, his fingers curled around the eyeglasses. He pushed them onto his nose in such a hurry that his thumb left a smudge on one of the lenses. As a result, when he once again began hysterically flipping through his sparse notes for the spell, he found himself awkwardly trying to look around the blur by tilting his head this way and that. Unfortunately, one by one, the pieces of parchment revealed nothing of what he wanted them to reveal: there was nothing about ley lines. There was also nothing that kept the spell insulated from external influences like the ley lines, to say nothing of the litany of magical oddities that could sneak up on a person. A weight settled in Albus' stomach.

Well—well, with any luck, perhaps the final result might not be as bad as he suspected. Somehow the thought did not comfort him as much as he would have liked, and instead, the weight grew heavier. He knew that he needed to ascertain what his spell had done—because it was likely that it had done _something_… just not exactly what he had wanted it to do originally.

It was with a hurried reluctance, if such a thing can be experienced, that Albus once again prepared himself for some thinking; he set up his working area as he had the previous day and began accounting for the influence of the biggest forgotten factors.

The spell worked on the assumption that a person's magic was tied to their soul, and that, likewise, their soul was tied to their body. It combined elements of scrying and portkeys; the spell first sought out the largest concentrations of magical power and then brought them into contact with the transportation element that grabbed onto the magic—and by that fact, the entire person—to then pull the individual to the caster. It would likely have worked if Albus had isolated it from other magic.

Once that was taken into consideration, it was clear that ley lines would affect the spell's result in many ways. Since location was crucial, both to finding an individual and to bringing them to the caster, the flow of magic in the earth would have loaned extra power to the 'finding' part of the spell: perhaps multiple people would have been found, or perhaps the spell could have searched outside the normal boundaries of magic, or—more likely—both.

A few scribbled calculations on the edges of his used parchment revealed that it was, indeed, both. Albus didn't really want to consciously acknowledge any of it even though he knew exactly what it meant, so he left the knowledge dormant for further consideration.

The second effect of the ley lines followed from the first; if more power had been used than Albus had individually invested, the final destination for the spell's subjects would be determined by the highest concentration of line crossings within reasonable proximity of the caster. Once again, Albus really didn't want to consciously acknowledge the consequences of his overlook, but he didn't really have a choice, as he'd just reached the end of everything he could work out.

So he let the realization come to him as his lauded intuited suspicions were proven to be correct.

… Albus had indeed ripped totally unknown and unsuspecting people from their place in the inter-dimensional space-time continuum and dumped them in the middle of the forbidden forest.

And he had—he had left them there, _alone_, for quite a while.

…

Not good. Not good at all.

He swallowed thickly. Attempted to calm down. Failed.

He was indeed, as he had so eloquently put it to indulge his inner melodramatic adolescent, completely and utterly _**doomed**_**.**

A pitiful soft whimper escaped him.

"_Oh_ _dear_."

* * *

_00:02 AM, DECEMBER 25, 1912:_

_A CLEARING IN THE FORBIDDEN FOREST_

* * *

Harry stared. He blinked, and continued to stare. He really couldn't help it.

He did have a good reason for staring in abject incomprehension, for, at his feet, snowy and bruised, was a young and alive Tom Riddle. Only, instead of his usual arrogant, smug expression, he looked as if he couldn't decide between being utterly stunned and being extremely furious. His typically perfect wavy hair was completely dishevelled and, like his face, rather moist from all the snow. The end result was, though hilarious, not quite as handsome as his trademark air.

At the lowest level of his awareness, Harry toyed with the notion that the current look on the man's face was entirely priceless, and that he would have liked a photograph.

However—more importantly—his conscious thoughts were more than confused, and appeared to be incapable of exceeding the complexity of a very loud mental, '_what the__** hell?!**__'_ It took all of his self control to keep himself from actually voicing that opinion as he once again mentally went over the situation in an attempt to make some sense out of it.

The first thing he had noticed after feeling the portkey-like pull had been the abrupt change in time and scenery. While it had previously been late afternoon, he had quickly noted that it was now sometime during the night; he had quickly made a mental annotation that his current location had to lay somewhere in the middle of the Pacific if logic was to be believed—a deduction that made no sense for Harry's surroundings, which looked far too much like the Forbidden forest for his liking. Moreover, he hadn't actually touched anything that could have been a portkey; he didn't know what else could have just transported him like that.

Since, at this point in his life, there were very few types of magic of which he didn't know at least the basics, he had been forced to conclude that whoever or whatever had orchestrated whatever was going on had to be either very intelligent for inventing the way, very knowledgeable for using an arcane technique, scarily powerful for having willed his presence, or some combination of the above. Harry did not like any of those implications.

The second thing he had noticed had been the presence of someone in the middle of casting the killing curse at some poor squirrel. From that, he had presumed that his kidnapper—if this wizard was he—was an incompetent underling of some 'get rid of Potter' mission thought up by a lunatic who clearly hadn't gotten the memo that all such attempts had failed for a reason. After all, what self-respecting villain ever got distracted from an incoming mission target by a squirrel, of all things? Certainly not Voldemort, and clearly the ability to remain focused on killing him hadn't saved _him_, nor had it helped any of his subsequent would-be murderers.

Of course, at that point, his saviour instincts had kicked in, and he had announced his unnoticed presence for the sake of a bloody squirrel.

Harry was not happy with himself; as soon as that had happened, he'd known that it would take quite a bit more work to find out exactly what was going on. Incompetent underlings were at their most revealing when they didn't know the enemy was spying their every move, after all. Not that they ever hid secrets very easily, but it would take more effort to establish the basic facts now that he'd given himself away.

Putting that aside, he had ended up having to deal with a rather feral wizard—Harry did wonder what could have angered the man so much—and had finally managed to subdue and disarm him without revealing anything about himself other than his liking for hitting others with sticks.

The third shock had come when he had looked upon the face of the underling-who-couldn't-be-an-underling, because the 'underling' was _Tom-'insert-an-eternity-to-gape'-Riddle_. Hurrah for hyphenated names.

And so, here he was, staring in disbelief at Tom Riddle after repeatedly hitting him with his walking stick. Once again, this was totally impossible, as (a) he was _quite_ sure that he had killed Riddle _quite_ thoroughly, and (b) once again, Riddle was _dead, _thank-you-very-much. Dead men did not suddenly come back to life as de-aged version of themselves, nor did they get themselves beat up like bullied schoolboys by their killers. If he was honest with himself, Harry would admit that he felt a little offended that Riddle had let himself be restrained that easily. It was unbecoming of his arch-nemesis.

The object of Harry's ponderings interrupted his musings in an echo his summary for the current state of affairs.

"What the _hell_?!"

Riddle's eyes had widened, and were frantically looking around. He now looked quite panicked, actually. Had Harry felt even an inkling of compassion for the man, he might have offered him a sour cherry candy. However, Harry did not like to have his train of thought broken; especially not when he was trying to figure out what was happening to him, and even less when _Riddle _was involved—particularly when Riddle himself was doing the interrupting.

"You—shut up," he snapped impatiently, dismissively waving his walking stick at the soggy face looking up at him.

He attempted to resume where his thoughts had left off; on one hand, Riddle, who was supposed to be dead, was shooting killing curses at squirrels and trying to attack him. On the other hand, he had been dragged away from Siberia by an unknown method that didn't involve any contact with his person, and everything about his current location made no sense whatsoever. Both events were somehow related, and he knew it: there was absolutely no such thing as a coincidence in Potter-land.

Unfortunately for Harry, it was just as absolute a certainty that telling someone to shut up does nothing to make them stop panicking—and of course, being dismissive of one Tom Riddle wasn't ever likely to help anyone regardless of the situation.

"_Why_ is it the middle of the bloody night?! Tell the truth! Why is it suddenly—"

Harry's thought process was interrupted at the precise moment the inevitable conclusion came to mind; naturally, Harry interrupted right back as his eyes snapped back to Riddle.

"This is _your_ fault!"

Had he let his interlocutor finish his sentence or paid any attention to him, he might have found information to contradict that conclusion, but, of course, as Potter luck would have it, he had not.

"_Excuse me?!_" Riddle's panic receded as he spluttered in disbelief, "_You_ attacked_ me_ for no bloody reason, and now _you_, a filthy _muggle_, accuse _me_!"

That last comment gave Harry some pause—so much so that he relented the pressure of his walking stick on Riddle's airway enough for the man to push it aside with the back of his hand.

Once again, he was confused. Certainly, he was dressed as a muggle, but it seemed… absolutely unthinkable for Voldemort not to recognize him. After all, _he_ recognized Riddle, and the most he'd ever seen of him at the age he appeared to be was for a few seconds in Dumbledore's pensive, when he had applied the second time for the DADA post. He felt rather affronted that his antagonist couldn't recognize _him_ just because he had aged a few years.

… He was _not _obsessed.

Harry's attention drifted back to Riddle, who had apparently continued to rant as, taking advantage of the lack of a cane at his throat, he stood and brushed himself off. Merlin, but that man loved to hear himself talk.

"... pathetic, weak mudblood _dare_—"

Harry decided to inelegantly cut off the tirade. He'd had enough of this.

"Oh, get over yourself. Get to the point and explain whatever this is all about—yeah, I get it, you want me dead, but you're clearly arrogant enough to enjoy the moment where you reveal your plans. So go ahead, don't let me stop you; I'm actually curious."

Amazingly, that managed to render Riddle speechless. Granted, it only lasted for a few seconds, but he felt somehow smug about making it happen at all.

"I don't _know_, you imbecilic fool," he ground out, "be assured that if I did, I would not have lowered myself to _asking_—but as you're nothing but a particularly ignorant muggle, there's no more need for that." Riddle's voice had, by then, taken on a decidedly self-satisfied tone.

This… made no sense at all. Voldemort should be gloating about his plan succeeding. He should have been doing that from the very beginning. Voldemort wouldn't have been cursing squirrels, he wouldn't have let himself get hit, and if he had set up the weird transport thing from Siberia, he wouldn't pretend to be innocent, and he'd definitely know who it was he had kidnapped—not to mention that he would have no problems recognizing Harry even if he'd just been trying to catch a random person. It was all so _wrong_.

And then it clicked. Riddle didn't know what was going on because there was a third party involved—and he didn't recognize Harry because there was something wrong with Riddle himself (other than his being impossibly back from the dead), and Harry intended to find out what it was. Since he couldn't detect another presence, the third party was currently in absentia. It would have to be dealt with later. Oh yes, he would solve this newest _riddle_.

"Now hand me my wand, boy, before I make you know pain so intense you will forget how to use your limbs—hand it over _now_," Riddle demanded, as he extended an elegant hand in the most condescending imaginable manner.

That had entirely been the wrong button to push. He was short, yes. He looked young, yes. But no one—_no one_—called him _boy_.

Harry's eye twitched.

Well, then—a muggle, was he?

He fought down a vindictive smirk as he reached into his pocket.

* * *

_02:56 AM, DECEMBER 25, 1912:_

_PRIVATE QUARTERS, HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY_

* * *

For several minutes, the silence in the room was punctuated by the sound of Albus' repeated attempts to regulate his breathing. His endeavour was failing, as evidenced by the fact that he was currently hyperventilating and a hair's breadth away from breaking down in sobs. His panic at this point was a result of having a fairly good idea of what his spell had done, but not knowing the possibly disastrous consequences of inter-dimensional time-travel. Every time he managed to calm down and start thinking, he kept expecting his own existence to cease, or the world to implode or pop out of existence. Of course, that did nothing to help his hysteria—quite the opposite in fact.

Reality soon caught up with his panic, though; clearly, he was still there, and so was the world, and he'd cast the spell quite a while ago, so, really, if anything was going to happen, it would have already.

His breathing quickened again when a stray thought hit him: if he was still there and the world was still there, what if his spell had killed _magic_? He stopped breathing altogether as he scrambled over himself to find his wand. He was about to give it a wave when he hesitated: what if he really _had_ broken magic? Forcing himself to ignore the thought, he took a great gulp of air—and was about to cast a levitation charm on a chair when its wood cracked and splintered before exploding.

Wonderful. Accidental magic out of sheer panic. Wasn't he getting too old for this?

Nonetheless, it answered the question. Albus had not committed manslaughter upon magic, which brought him to the inevitable conclusion: he really needed to investigate, because he couldn't let otherworldly strangers roam around ignorant of what was going on, and so—he plucked himself off the floor and promptly rushed out of his quarters, unmindful of the fact that he was sporting a night robe and slippers.

Albus ran as fast as he could, down the hallway, a left turn, another hallway, stairs that didn't attempt to move, more chilly hallways, more stairs, through the shortcuts he remembered from his schooldays until, finally, he empty crossed the great hall with his footsteps noisily echoing back to his ears and made it to the main doors, only to be greeted by a wave of icy air upon opening them. It was not long before, with a freshly applied warming charm, he was halfway across the grounds on his way to the forest, robe flapping in the wind behind him.

As he ran, the exercise gradually ate away at some of his alarm to turn it into irritation at himself—all of this just confirmed what Albus already knew: he could not be trusted with power.

At all. Ever. For any reason. Under any 'extenuating' circumstances.

Negative emotions made Albus Dumbledore redundant.

He almost felt that it would be appropriate if someone wrote, '_handle with care if given any form of power: desperately needs humbling supervision,' _across his forehead. If a day's work had done _this_, he didn't even want to think about what might happen if he ever let himself fulfil some of his ambitions. He didn't want to think about what might happen if he did acquiesce to Gellert's request and joined him in Russia or went hallow-hunting with him, either. Then again, denial had never suited him; he was far more prone to fits of self-degradation.

He further quashed his imminent panic attack with the thought that, as he had noted to put an end to his apoplectic fit, it wasn't like the world had imploded. There was no need for any panic beyond the apprehension of meeting wizards who may or may not react very well to being dragged away from their reality. Indeed, he was quite sure it was rather best to think of his emotional state as 'mildly alarmed,' and to focus his energies on getting through this mess so that he could properly blame and berate himself when it was all over.

A few minutes later, he had crossed the grounds and was directing himself straight to the centre of the forest. As he hurried, he briefly thought he heard a faraway scream of outrage, but dismissed it as a combination of his overanxious imagination and general lack of sleep. It was not long before Albus found himself at the edge of the clearing where multiple ley lines crossed—so many of them that he could feel the strong and heady flow of magic thrumming beneath his feet.

He was, somehow, both relieved and discomfited to find that there was no one. On the one hand, he supposed that it was for the best that his spell hadn't done anything, but the selfish part of him was disappointed that he hadn't met whoever it was that the spell might recognize as the strongest wizards, those for whom he could hope to feel some level of affinity.

The conflicting sentiments persisted until he looked at his feet and noticed, out of the corner of his eye, footprints in the snow. Closer inspection revealed that there were in fact two sets of footsteps. At some point the trails met, and there were signs that there had been a scuffle between these individuals a few metres from Albus if the collection of heavy impressions of hands, knees, and a back were to be believed.

And—oh dear—it even looked as though one of them had dragged the other on the ground through the clearing and right into the underbrush. Droplets of blood even stained the snow where stray branches had whipped at the unfortunate individual.

The young professor stared at the trail in bewilderment: surely there were politer ways for a wizard to ensure compliance.

Either way, he had the distinct impression that he should set about to following after the tracks in the immediate future. He was probably a few hours behind them as it was, though he dared to hope that the wizard doing the dragging might be slowed down by his unwilling passenger.

Albus resigned himself to a long and exhausting hike.

* * *

_00:11 AM, DECEMBER 25, 1912:_

_A CLEARING IN THE FORBIDDEN FOREST_

* * *

He saw the muggle's eye twitch as he demanded to be repossessed of his wand, and he did not like his expression when he reached into his back pocket and withdrew the item in question. Nor did he like his tone when he spoke.

"Oh, you mean this little twig? Why, I don't believe I will."

Tom thought that the muggle looked inordinately pleased with himself, for someone who didn't know the meaning of what he was doing.

Seeing his wand, though, gave him the necessary incentive to give it a tug of wandless magic… only to have the muggle tighten his grip on it and _tut_ at him as if he were a disobedient child.

"Oh my, I rather think I almost dropped this stick, although," the mugglehad the nerve to say, "I don't know why I care, since it looks quite useless… well now, I may as well break it."

And with those damning words Tom's cherished piece of yew was bent until he could hear the wood creak and there was nothing he could do because any action on his part might break it and he wanted the muggle to die because this was _his_ wand and—and then that blasted _thief_ stopped applying pressure, tapped the tip of the wand to his chin and assumed a thoughtful expression.

"Then again," he insultingly pointed the wand at Tom and waved it mildly, "your expression just now gives evidence to the contrary."

It was Tom's turn to suffer an eye twitch, but the man resumed his insufferable gloating in a falsely innocent voice before he could deliver a suitable retort.

"Well then, my aggressive new acquaintance, it looks like your precious twig will be my hostage."

Had Tom Riddle been a lesser man, he might have actually done something unbecoming like allowing a frustrated scream to escape him, but he settled for biting his tongue and trying a more brutal wandless yank.

The muggle and Tom's wand remained impossibly unaffected.

Tom blinked in surprise ("Wha—?!"), and before he had any time to react, the wand-thieving muggle summarily grabbed his hands and tied his wrists together tightly with a length of rope that came from Merlin knows where.

He stared at his hands in silent horror.

His jaw dropped slightly.

He blinked once… twice.

And then—_anger_. His magic lashed out with his will to get his wand back and to remove the offending rope in the most expedient manner. He _expected_ the ropes to pop away, or even to burst aflame, and then to catch his wand as it flew to him.

None of that happened.

He did not notice when he dazedly took a slow step forward, pulled along by the man who was holding onto the ropes: he was shocked into numbness.

_Never_ had his magic failed him. Never.

His left foot slid forward by a few centimetres.

The entire situation could be reduced to one conclusion: there was something fundamentally wrong with him—and come to think of it, he _did_ feel rather odd—in a slightly disturbing way, almost as if he were out of sorts. He couldn't identify precisely what was off with him.

His right foot followed.

Had someone cursed him during his earlier outburst of rage? He _had_ been rather absorbed in his own magic, so it was possible that he had missed a detail or two (though he was loath to admit it).

He took another haphazard step.

A curse would certainly explain whatever hallucinatory fit he was currently experiencing, seemingly involving an insane muggle, the sudden winter and night, and malfunctioning magic.

Tom stopped in his tracks.

Of all utterly absurd things to be doing, he was _hallucinating_.

The muggle tugged at the ropes a bit more forcefully. Tom resisted; he was most certainlynot about to let some fake muggle in a fake reality boss him around.

"I refuse to let a hallucination force me to do anything against my will, illusory muggle."

The hallucination in question looked completely baffled as Tom yanked his hands back toward him with the intention of making the man lose his grip on the ropes. Unfortunately, bafflement had failed to loosen the man's fingers. Instead, the muggle was jerked forward, almost lost his balance as Tom viciously jerked his hands from one side to the other to shake him off, and promptly shot a glare at Tom when he regained his footing.

Before Tom even had a chance to renew his attempt at liberating himself, his captor once again tripped him up with his cane: he landed belly-up on the snow. More rope was then quickly pulled out of nowhere, and it was with the threatening pressure of a foot on his throat that Tom had to watch as his ankles were fastened together, and his arms bound to his chest.

Apparently, whoever had cast the curse to make him hallucinate knew how he felt about muggles, and _really_ wanted to humiliate him. That ruled out Dumbledore, who would never openly stoop to such techniques. It probably pointed to an inefficient follower with delusions of grandeur, who was going to suffer for a very, very long time before receiving the mercy of death.

Of course, that particular ambition was going to have to wait until Tom found a way out of the hallucination, preferably in a way that involved fulfilling his desire to see the illusory muggle's illusory innards hanging from illusory trees. How ironic that the Azande had done the very same to check for witchcraft-substance in the deceased accused of being witches. Of course it was the colonizing muggles who had named those beliefs 'witchcraft', and Azande notions of witchcraft had precious little to do with the magic that was taught at Hogwarts, but emulating the practice would amuse Tom for a few seconds.

Not that Tom had ever read any muggle anthropological monographs over his summers at the orphanage and actually found them interesting. Not he.

Further delightfully violent ponderings were interrupted when the muggle looked down at him as if Tom was a lowly insect—perhaps he could slowly kill him by making the most peripheral appendages explode and gradually making his way to vital parts—and rolled his eyes at him.

"Do you really think what you want will make a difference? You're physically weak, and you're tied up. I can break your important twig thing whenever I like. All of that means that if I want to drag you along on my way out of this forest, you get to suck it up, grit your teeth and endure it. Now shut up or I'll gag you."

When the muggle dragged him feet-first into the underbrush and the first branches snapped at his face, Tom reached the overwhelming conclusion that no amount of torturing him (or whoever had created his character for the hallucination) would ever satisfy him.

* * *

_03:01 AM, DECEMBER 25, 1912:_

_SOMEWHERE NEAR THE END OF THE FORBIDDEN FOREST_

* * *

In the end, Harry had not needed to gag Riddle: he had fumed and probably imagined all manners of torture, but had restrained himself to the occasional outraged snarl when he was hit by a particularly thick branch.

After a few hours of trudging through the snow and hauling his arch-nemesis behind him, Harry was tired, and Riddle was starting to feel heavier and heavier.

Now that he'd let Riddle see him as a muggle (and let him believe that he'd been thoroughly humiliated by a muggle), he was unwilling to levitate him the rest of the way to Hogwarts—for this was indeed the forbidden forest—or to apparate there directly when it was reputedly impossible to do so. No, it was best to keep the upper hand; the less Riddle and any new person he might encounter on this freak-adventure knew about him, the better. Revealing himself as a wizard was definitely out of the question.

As for knocking Riddle unconscious to keep him unaware while he used magic… well, that would take all the fun of seeing sharp branches disfigure him while he was completely powerless and aware that a _muggle_ was putting him through the ordeal of being dragged through the underbrush like a hunter's common game animal.

It was so gratifying to use his own magic to block the other man's attempts to free himself, too. Wandless spells tended to lack the density of magic done with a wand: filaments of fabric as opposed to kevlar wire cables. They also tended to be precise, as an economy of energy, whereas accidental magic was wild and scattered: direct bullets as opposed to a poisonous mist. As a result of those characteristics, they were easy to isolate and snip, unlike other types of magic that required more elaborate means to stop them. Harry had taken full advantage of that fact.

… Alright, so maybe his main reason for continuing to walk through the forest without resorting to was to torture Riddle, and everything else was post-hoc rationalization. Still, it was mostly worth the trouble.

But the fact remained that Harry was exhausted and irritated, and that he was advancing very slowly through the forest. For sustenance, he had covertly conjured a few sandwiches into his bag and eaten them, so hunger wasn't an issue, but _he wanted Dobby's hot chocolate_. Was that too much to bloody ask? Why was it that whenever he thought he was finally getting a break, some freak happenstance just _had_ to take over his life?

Vindictively, he 'accidentally' jerked Riddle into a jutting rock.

Apparently, that was the last straw for him: after letting out a pained noise, he bellowed, "ARGH! I've had _enough!_ This nonsense stops _now!_" and let out a surprisingly intense burst of emotion-driven accidental magic that (quite viciously; Riddle did seem desperately angry) tore Harry's conjured ropes apart.

Harry then found himself fighting off Riddle, who, in a bid to steal back his wand, had tackled him to the ground. He was not helped by the fact that he really was tired, and wanted nothing more but to collapse into a couch and stop moving for a few hours. Physically subduing a young Voldemort _again_ wasn't a priority on his agenda.

Moments before Harry gave in to the overwhelming temptation to do the easy thing and stun Riddle (or 'accidentally' off him), a voice took it upon itself to interrupt their brawl.

"Gentlemen, _gentlemen_! Please," a breath, loud exhale, and deep inhale.

"Do show some decorum. I am certain," the speaker once again tried to catch his breath, "your dispute can be resolved through more diplomatic means."

From the corner of his eye, Harry noticed that he was not the only one who then turned to gawk in appalled realization at what he recognized to be a youthful and very much tousled and out-of-breath version of Albus Dumbledore grinning like a loon.

Of course, this mess _would_ involve him in some way or another. Harry was surprised that he hadn't thought of it, in retrospect.

* * *

_03:04 AM, DECEMBER 25, 1912:_

_SOMEWHERE NEAR THE END OF THE FORBIDDEN FOREST_

* * *

Albus knew that he was grinning like a loon, and likely looking quite bizarre, when he finally caught up to his extra-dimensional guests and got their attention by breaking up their little fight. The two men were gaping at him—he presumed that he would have stared as well if someone came running in a bathrobe from deep in the forbidden forest. He didn't much care that he looked ridiculous—he was ecstatic!

"It worked! It _worked_!"

Childish giggles bubbled their way out of him. Albus should have been mortified, but he could barely even bring himself to do was to banish a stray thought that his eyes must be twinkling more than ever.

One of the men—the taller one, who, as the blood on his face testified, was clearly the victim of the branches Albus had seen earlier—twitched violently. Poor man, the experience must have traumatised him terribly.

Then the very same man spoke. He sounded on the verge of a mental breakdown involving manslaughter.

"_What_ worked?"

"Why, my spell, of course!"

Mr. Trauma (as Albus had decided to temporarily call him in the privacy of his thoughts) looked inches away from having a seizure. How curious. The other man—Mr. Green, for his eyes—saw it as his duty to stand up and to take over the interrogation.

"…A spell. Am I to assume that this _spell_ of yours is why I somehow suddenly went from one time zone to another?"

Albus felt compelled to provide a relatively modest answer.

"Yes, yes! Just yesterday I created an absolutely revolutionary spell designed to seek out the most powerful wizards and bring them to meet me!"

He paused to see the effect of his words.

Mr. Trauma had recovered from his impending fit, stood up and brushed the snow off his robes, and now looked smug. Mr. Green, on the other hand, did not.

"Well, I'm certainly not," he dryly (and somewhat exasperatedly) proclaimed, which made absolutely no sense to Albus. Surely he couldn't be claiming not to be powerful.

"What do you mean, dear sir? The spell would not have picked you out otherwise."

"Well, since I've no precise idea what you're talking about when you say 'wizard', I'm pretty sure I'm not."

Albus allowed himself blinked owlishly. He felt rather like someone had stolen a fresh stash of lemon drops right as he'd been about to sample it. How could one of the most powerful wizards think they were a muggle? Doubtless, he would have been tipped off by the sheer amount of accidental magic as a child… Unless his spell had done something wrong… But that was impossible; if this man was a muggle, there would have been nothing for the spell to latch onto. Or perhaps the man was a muggle, and had somehow strayed into the forest by accident… But no, the school's wards made that impossible. _Unless_… Yes, maybe this man was a wizard, knew it, but was playing a prank and pretending to be a muggle.

Well, better to go along than to argue with a man in a middle of a prank.

"I see…" he deliberately spoke slowly to make his argument realistic, "I suppose that there must have been some type of incongruence in the flow of magic at your location…"

He hoped his excuse was acceptable to Mr. Trauma—Albus didn't want to ruin Mr. Green's prank, because judging by his treatment of his companion, he was not one to be displeased.

A glance at Mr. Trauma revealed that he had not put Mr. Green's status as a muggle into question: he still looked smug, and was giving a disdainful, condescending smirk to the shorter man.

It was all rather rude of him. Perhaps Albus could understand why Mr. Green felt a desire to make Mr. Trauma earn that name.

But then that very man seemed to break away from his moment of satisfaction, and started to look quite suspicious. He hoped he hadn't seen through his flimsy excuse—he found himself agreeing with the idea to play a minor prank on Mr. Trauma.

"How did your spell 'find' me if I was already _right there_," the latter hissed, "when the middle of a summer afternoon magically turned into the middle of a winter night, hmm?"

Albus thought he might have liked it better if the prank had been ruined, instead.

"Well, you see," he hesitantly enounced, not quite enthused to reveal his blunder, "I—er—may have miscalculated slightly."

Blank looks from his guests encouraged him to elaborate; his bubbling happiness from earlier could deflate no further.

"The spell… went rather out of bounds. When it came to seeking, that is."

Although Mr. Green merely looked patiently expectant, Mr. Trauma was looking more and more exasperated, and thus charmingly expressed his displeasure: "Get to the point or I'll eviscerate you."

Albus found that having one's feathers ruffled did wonders for confidence.

"I'm afraid you are quite permanently displaced, both temporally and dimensionally. To Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Christmas of 1912," he offered, with an upward lilt in his tone that gave every phrase a hesitant, almost questioning quality. He cursed himself for being so weak, but at least, he thought, his voice was congruent with his shaky smile. Looking honest ought to count for at least something in their esteem of him.

Mr. Green's eyes grew particularly sharp at that.

"Permanently?" No mercy, much to Albus' chagrin.

"I frankly cannot say exactly how the spell managed to carry you from different time periods, let alone from different dimensions. There is little hope of reversing the process if it cannot be understood." That, and the fact that Albus _did_ want some interesting friends (though he wasn't about to let that slip).

At those words, his interlocutor looked strangely resigned to his fate.

It reminded Albus of that time he had seen the unfortunate victim of a prophecy be carted off to marry their fated intended, who this person happened to despise very much.

Mr. Trauma (who currently looked beyond rage all the way into demonic possession) posed the next question with a tightly clenched jaw and a heavy sneer.

"And would you mind explaining the grand feat of magic that brought us to this singularly exotic destination?"

Lectures were, luckily, far less uncomfortable than admissions of incompetence.

"Well, the only clear thing about _why_ you were brought to the forbidden forest instead of to me is that there is a major concentration of ley lines right about where you appeared—in other words, they created interference with the spell. The fact that power from ley lines was involved is probably what allowed the spell to seek outside this particular time and dimension.

"As for _how_ it found and transported you, it all hinges on the fact that one's magic is tied to the soul—the spell scryed for high concentrations of magic and grabbed whatever soul the magic belonged to. For that reason, magical hotspots like Hogwarts or Diagon Alley—which cannot have souls—were not accidentally targeted. In essence, it was your soul that was found and transported; your magic and body followed because the trio share an intrinsic bond—an inherent quality, of sorts, that ensures that your magic does not stray from you and that, similarly, you cannot switch souls with other people."

When Albus paused to conjure some water for his dry throat, he noted that those words had a curious effect on his audience: Mr. Trauma blanched, and Mr. Green displayed a rather chilling smirk.

* * *

_That_ charming piece of information certainly explained why he had been feeling odd. It wasn't because he'd spent the last few hours in a hallucinatory state. No, instead, his soul had carelessly and brutally been mashed back into one piece when its pieces were simultaneously transported into a single container.

Tom felt the blood rush from his face and correctly assumed that he had paled. This notion was indeed confirmed when the very cause of his distress expressed concern for his health.

"My dear man, are you alright? You look a little faint."

Oh, how he _loathed _Dumbledore. Always—_always_—the man had thwarted him, _known _things about him. But of course that fiend would never be content with just that. All his hard work with setting up a power base of potential followers, his research into the dark arts, his horcruxes that he'd _just_ finished hiding… _gone_. Gone, at a mere _whim_ that Dumbledore, in all his inexistent wisdom, had managed to turn into a ridiculous _fluke_. He wanted to make him suffer, to torture him until he had begged for mercy for so long that his screams of pain became boring.

He cast a sidelong glance at the muggle boy in hopes that the latter might be caught unaware enough to be relieved of Tom's wand.

Instead of the dumbfounded air he had expected in someone who had just been introduced to the maddest aspects of magic, he was met with a knowing glare that threatened to send shivers up his spine.

… Perhaps it was best to exercise some caution in his dealings with Dumbledore. After all, he had to admit, though grudgingly, that the man had proven to be powerful and cunning—a dangerous combination if dealt with carelessly.

All things considered, it would not be a good idea to allow the codger to find out that a _muggle_, of all things, had deprived him of his wand. He would get it back away from those twinkling eyes, or Dumbledore might otherwise get inappropriate delusions about his strength or lack thereof.

And it was better to let Dumbledore independently discover what an utter _monster_ that man was.

This strategic retreat had nothing at all to do with the filthy muggle's feeble glares.

"Yes, of course—I was merely," Tom paused meaningfully, "_taken aback_ by the enormity of this situation. I assure you, it's nothing to worry about: do carry on"

Still, if the oddities weren't due to a hallucination but rather to Dumbledore's stupidity, nothing explained why his wilful wandless magic continued to dissipate before it could affect anything. Something was afoot. He didn't know what, or who, precisely, had done something to his magic, but he would find out—and whoever was the cause of this distress would rue the day they decided to mess with Lord Voldemort.

* * *

Harry watched, torn between amusement and annoyance, as Dumbledore genially took a sip of water and finished explaining the general workings of his spell.

"Well then, as you can see, I added a small extra radius to include any clothing or objects you were carrying out of courtesy. The rest—most notably, how the spell crossed dimensions—remains vague beyond the probable influence of ley lines. Luckily, none of us need to worry about temporal paradoxes, as we are all from distinct dimensions that cannot influence one another."

It wasn't that he was leaving any _truly_ important attachments behind; he could always take up his old profession in this dimension, and his friends (not that he had anything against them) included a grand total of one human who communicated through correspondence plus one obsessive house-elf. He couldn't say that he minded this new adventure too much.

Besides, Dumbledore (whom, it occurred to Harry, had apparently forgotten to introduce himself in his excitement) and Riddle were both more interesting than the average sane wizard.

"So, gentlemen, now that you are properly acquainted with the circumstances of our meeting, shall we be friends?"

As he watched Tom visibly suppress the urge to strangle, flay, decapitate, or otherwise mortally maim the twinkling wizard, Harry settled for the opinion that this new messy interference of Dumbledore's in his life might turn out to be more fun than not—if only he could manage not to burst in hysterical peals of laughter at the absurdity of it all.

After all, for once, he was the one who held all the secrets—who even understood what was going on in the first place—and his dearest old coot, despite being the instigator of their gathering, was the most ignorant of them all.


End file.
